The present embodiments relate to medical imaging artifacts. Medical imaging is used for clinical diagnosis or prognosis. In medical imaging, the process of image acquisition, reconstruction, and/or rendering often introduces artifacts, causing the images to be of poor quality. One or more of different types of artifacts, such as motion blur, noise, streaking, intensity inhomogeneity, ripples, partial volume effects, or pseudo enhancements are in the generated image. An artifact may interfere with clinical evaluation, such as falsely mimic anatomy and/or providing false clinical indications (i.e., a pseudo enhancement artifact mimicking stroke or malignant lesion). Artifacts may result in patients having to be re-scanned, increasing costs, radiation to the patient, and time in the hospital. Artifacts may be overlooked or taken as “truth” in diagnosis.
The artifacts may be avoided by selection of protocol, patient positioning, and reconstruction algorithm. In many cases, these artifacts cannot be predicted due to the patient, system, or scanning variations.
Artifacts are typically identified by physicians, technologists, or radiologists. Based on experience, the presence or influence of an artifact is recognized. The identification of these artifacts is strongly based on personal experience and knowledge of artifacts, especially in specific imaging modalities.